When fed to mice early in life, generated overweight mice that did not eat more or move less than unexposed leaner counterparts

Found in such things as can linings for tinned foods and soft drinks, baby toys and bottles, food storage containers, dental sealants, medical tubing, and flame retardant

Phthalate

An endocrine disruptor; a salt or ester of phthalic acid. The esters are commonly used as plasticizers in PVC and can cause kidney and liver damage when ingested

Hormone

Chemicals produced by glands in the body and circulated in the bloodstream that control the actions of certain cells or organs

Obesogen

An exogenous chemical that interacts with cellular signaling systems involved in determining cell fate, leading to abnormally high development of adipose tissue during development, and disrupting metabolic regulation in the developing organism

Chronic (noncommunicable) diseases

A disease of long duration such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes; often recurring

Developmental Origins of Adult Health and Disease (DOHAD)

Negative environmental factors and maternal impacts on the fetus in utero contributes to the low birth weight of the infant, which has only immediate benefits that deal only the current, often temporary conditions of the environment that leads to greater later mortality rate in adulthood.

Reduced fetal growth is a phenotypic adaptive response to environmental cues. These changes may prove adaptive in the short-term (to get through gestation and early life) but deleterious in later life, particularly when the prediction of adversity is followed by an enriched childhood and adult environment.

Evolutionary medicine

Sometimes also called "Darwinian Medicine"; refers to the application of principles of evolution to medical research, practice, and theory and is a merger of long time scale (human evolution) with short time scale (disease in the present)

Natural selection

Based on the fact that populations are genetically varied, natural selection points out that environmental pressures favor some of these bodies or their behaviors (phenotype) over others, that phenotypes that confer reproductive advantage become more common, thus increasing the frequency of genetic factors underlying those phenotypes

Paleolithic era

The "stone age" where evidences of the first stone tools were discovered. The groups were too small to support communicable diseases, but slow infections such as intestinal worms and herpes virus still were present. Life expectancy in the Paleolithic era ranges from around 25 to 30 years of age.

Paleolithic diet

Early agriculture, animal domestication, and sedentism (no longer nomadic) began and there was a decline in consumption of meat.

Human gut morphology, however, is designed to be more carnivorous than folivorous or frugivorous. Since concentrated packets of calories were rare in the wild, hunter-gatherers consumed a wide variety of foods such as meats, fruits, and vegetables. Humans also evolved a preference for high fat, high sugar, and salty foods (such as meat), which were hard to find in nature but is today readily available.

Fat deposition serves as a buffer for when there is a shortage of food. For example, the human's large brain size requires buffering to provide a constant supply of glucose.

Lactase persistence

Capacity to digest lactose even into adulthood when our bodies don't produce lactase any longer

Physical activity level

Physical activity level (PAL) is a way to express a person's daily physical activity as a number and is used to estimate a person's total energy expenditure from physical exertion to sedentary labor.

Energy density (of food)

Our human bodies are built in the same way as those of our ancestors in the Paleolithic era and are not accustomed to the "concentrated packets of calories" (see 17. Paleolithic diet), also called the energy dense foods, that today's industrialized environment offers and therefore transform the excess energy into fat.

Polygenic

Two or more genes in interaction, and with the environment

Diabetes and obesity are polygenic.

Genome wide association study

GWAS; A case-control study in which genetic variation, often measured as SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism: a variation at a single position in a DNA sequence among individuals) that form haplotypes across the entire genome, is compared between people with particular condition and unaffected individuals

Genotype

An individual's allelic variation; genetic makeup of an organism that describes an organism's complete set of genes.

Phenotype

Observable physical properties of an organism, including appearance, development, and behavior; determined by the organism's genotype and by environmental influences upon these genes

All aspects of a living thing other than its genetic constitution

Thrifty phenotype hypothesis

Reduced fetal growth is strongly associated with a number of chronic conditions later in life.

Barker hypothesis

Link between low birth weight and adult CVD and diabetes

In poor nutritional conditions, a pregnant woman can modify the development of her unborn child such that it will be prepared for survival in an environment in which resources are likely to be short, resulting in a thrifty phenotype.

Predictive adaptive response

Changed developmental strategy with delayed but no obvious immediate benefit (i.e. in mammals, thicker coats if born in the fall/winter and thinner coats if born in the spring/summer)

Type 1 diabetes: juvenile onset (has nothing to do with obesity) when the pancreas fails to produce insulin

Type 2 diabetes: "adult" onset when the cells become resistant to the effects of insulin; 90% of the cases worldwide of diabetes are considered type 2

Gestational diabetes: acquired during pregnancy from the high blood glucose level during gestation; has major but nonfatal effects for the fetus

Insulin

A hormone made by the pancreas that targets cells with insulin receptors and acts on liver, muscle, and fat cells, causing them to take up glucose from the blood. Without insulin, the cells would starve even if the body was ingesting food.

Blood glucose

A simple sugar that is the main source of energy for cells (particularly neurons) that can be stored in muscle or liver cells as glycogen. Hyper- or hypo-glycaemia refers to too much or too little glucose in the blood.

BMI

Body Mass Index. A measure of an adult's weight in relation to his or her height, specifically the adult's weight in kilograms divided by the square of his or her height in meters.

Adipose tissue

Fat tissues; fat is now considered a hormone-producing organ in its own right.

Two scientific theories are commensurable if they can be put side-by-side and compared for accuracy or strength of proof.

Incommensurability arises due to:

- Standards for setting the parameters of experiments and the interpretation of data

- Vocabulary of problem-solving methods (different words and different concepts)

- Proponents of different approaches see the world differently and have different prior assuptions due to different training

Moral panic

As defined by Cohen in 1972, "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests"

Social Frame/Framing

Assumption; the selection and emphasis of "some aspects of a perceived reality... in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition" (Entman 1993:52)

Captures some reality but not the others

i.e. obesity as a medical frame

Stigma

A distinguishing mark of social disgrace, such as the stigma that being obese is the fault of self

Thrifty gene/genotype hypothesis

Ancient genetic adaptation to cycles of feast (abundance) and famine required genes to be "thrifty."

Genes for a "thrifty metabolism" is efficient at storing fat when plasma glucose levels are highest during times of adundance.

Transition of our ancestors' lifestyle from a hunting-gathering early agricultured to a more settled and nutritionally assured exitence causes these thrifty genes, which were once useful, to often become a burden on our health nowadays.

Assumptions of TGH:

- Hunter-gatherers experienced a feast/famine cycle

- Genetic differences is the primary cause of disease susceptibility

- Particular peoples have been recently pressured by events such as slavery or particular geographic experience to manifest particular genetic propensity to disease

- There has been enough evolutionary time for this selection for diabetes propensity genes to manifest either in all humans or particularty in some

Geneticization

The ways in which the science of genetics influences society at large; for example, using genetics to try to explain why a group of people (i.e. the indigenous), is prone to obesity (i.e. through the thrifty gene hypothesis)

Soda tax

Literally a tax on soda, but refers generally to tax on junk foods to discourage the consumption of unhealthy foods

Epigenetic trait

A stably inherited phenotype resulting from changes in a chromosome without alterations in the DNA sequence

Epigenetics

A field of study of the molecular signal that regulate gene expression

Methylation

Changing certain genes at birth through introduction of the methyl group

Correlation

The mutual relation of two or more things; i.e. lower SES consistently correlates with higher morbidity and mortality

Causation

The relation of cause to effect; i.e. change from correlation to causation refers to finding out that one is the cause of the other while used to think that they are only related

Epidemiology

Study of the incidence and prevalence (causes, distribution, and control) of disease in large populations and with detection of the source and cause of epidemics of infectious disease

Whitehall Study

The cohort study conducted over 10 years for 17,530 British male civil servants between the ages of 20 and 64 that investigated social determinants of health, specifically the cardiorespiratory disease prevalence and mortality rates among them. The study showed that mortality rates varied continuously and precisely with the men's civil service grade; the higher the classification, the lower the rates of deah, regardless of cause, and the mortality rates for men in the lowest civil service class were three times higher than those of men in the highest grade.

The social environment of an individual is the culture that he was educated or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts.

Measured by: discrimination, number of social connections, violence (crime index), perception as important as empirical measures of these variables, connecting different forms of data together (census, health records, individual surveys)

Public understanding of science (3 components)

Knowing a lot of science, such as how the digestive system works, what an atom is

Knowing how science works, such as research methods, how science operates day to day

Knowing how science really works, as in the sociological knowledge of how the scientific community operates, how research efforts secure funding, how theories come into vogue, are judged, accepted, or rejected

Deficit model

Assumption that the lay public is ignorant, irrational, and uneducated when it comes to science and that if only lay public knew more about science, they would approve of it more (i.e. GM foods)

A formal or official examination of the particulars of something, made in order to ascertain condition, character, etc.

Focus group

A representative group of people questioned together about their opinions on political issues, consumer products, etc.

Reflexivity

Individuals reflect on the social forces acting on them or their places in a social structure, a recognition which affects their actions on or within that social structure. That is, people do not blindly "accept" or "reject" scientific knowledge; they negotiate it reflexively.

Public accountability

The obligation of the public to be answerable for fiscal and social responsibilities, to whose who have assigned such responsibilities to them.

Stress-diathesis

The stress-diathesis model explains behavior as a result of both biological and genetic vulnerability and stress from life experiences. For example, if one has both diathesis-stress and stress, one is more one is more susceptible to disorders and diseases.

Intermediate phenotype

Some trait that is less complex and less observable that is closely related to genes, such as an illness.

Genetic susceptibility to the environment

Genes may increase susceptibility to negative and positive environments. For example, a child will thrive under conditions of environmental enrichment and positivity.

Symptom/syndrome

Symptom: a phenomenon that arises from and accompanies a particular disease or disorder and serves as an indication of it

Syndrome: a constellation of symptoms

ADHD

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; a childhood neurobehaviotal disorder characterized by developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention, hyperactivity, or impulsivity that impair academic, family, and social settings; caused by genetic and environmental factors such as high heritability of genes, low birth weight, prenatal exposure to teratogens from maternal smoking and alcohol use during pregnancy, maltreatment (i.e. abuse), and poor parental nurturing/parenting

What is the relationship between "interleukin," "inflammation," and "obesity" or "mortality"?

Obesity is closely linked to the insulin resistance syndrome (IRS), type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, the primary cause of morbidity and mortality in these patients. Elevated levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), indicating chronic subclinical inflammation, have been associated with features of the IRS and incident cardiovascular disease.

Fundamental components: Thrifty genotype hypothesis

Fundamental components: Thrifty phenotype hypothesis

Fundamental components: SES and health disparities

Give at least 5 causal explanations for rising rates of obesity in the United States over the last twenty years.

1. Accessibility to food (Are there more healthy or junk food readily available and which is cheaper?)

2. Income (SES; Do we have the money to buy the healthy foods?)

3. Appetite vs. hunger (Do we need or want the food?)

4. In the past, it is more favorable to store fat in case of times of famine.

5. Sedentary lifestyle (Lazy, no exercise)

6. High levels of adipose tissue (Excess amounts of adipose tissue inherited from the parents that we can't really do anything about)

7. Possibility that obesity is caused by a virus? (If so, then there could be a vaccine and the "epidemic" would be solved.)

Ways in which society and culture "get under the skin" or how social and cultural factors are "transduced" into biological form.

Explain how something such as "stress" or government regulation of pesticides can directly impact biology and health.

The government can make laws that control the pesticide use and/or how, when, and where it can be used, under what circumstances, etc. This, like the implementation of EZ-Passes, will reduce pollution and the residues in the environment for those who live around those areas, thus improving their health.